Mattresses

You know the story of the Princess and the Pea? I’m starting to wonder if the pea was kind of besides the point. That the other point of the story is that some princesses want that much cushy bedding in the first place. We bought a crappy yet expensive mattress a couple of years ago and my spouse has pointed out that our health may be more important than toughing it out even though this mattress seems almost indestructible and may last quite a while.

Been looking online at several options, mainly trying to avoid pushy sales people. Against all reasoning, we stopped by a store Thanksgiving Weekend to see what was available in real life (we were in the area doing something else). Some of the online places have trial periods, but we don’t have a lot of room to keep the mattress from hell as a spare in case we nee to return an online purchase and don’t want to sleep on the floor. Unfortunately one of the main reasons we stuck with the mattress from hell was because we got rid of the horribly worn out predecessor and couldn’t logistically return it fast enough. That, and we foolishly thought maybe it would somehow break in after more time (trial periods were shorter then). It’s been years, and that thing is not breaking in.

Back to the in-store adventure. The sales guy was nicer than I ever could have expected. Previous experiences involved people telling me what I needed despite my telling them that’s not what I wanted. Or the vultures, such as in car dealerships. This time, no one pounced; we eventually asked if someone was available, and he simply pointed us towards options based on our questions and reactions. What a concept. Since we weren’t seriously considering buything anything, tried to ask vague questions about materials and layers in case such properties might be compared to other mattresses. And since we weren’t really considering, also pretended we didn’t have a price-range in mind. Maybe it was good practice for a poker face when we found my ideal mattress included a poofy mattress topper sold separately that cost twice as much as our previous expensive mattress. Even if we only got a half size topper for my side of the bed. Only princesses can afford that price of sleeping luxery. See, at least some of the online mattresses have warranties for 15, 20 years, or even “lifetime.” This one somehow charged an extra $100+ just for the 10 year and had a shorter trial period. Again, learning from our previous experience, the showroom model was great. Exactly what we wanted. But the one that arrived was not. Even though the showroom model was only 2 months old, they assured us it only needed a little longer to break in (and that’s what we were hoping anyway, since we would othertise be stuck without anything to sleep on but the floor). So all I’m saying is you’ve got to jump up and down on the mattress hoping to break it in sooner than later so you know if you really want it since half the time you have it is breaking it in, and this store’s trial wasn’t especially long (3 months). Then the cost per year, assuming it only lasts 10 years . . . I guess it was nice to dream.